The Last Ride Together 859 Look at the end of work, contrast This present of theirs with the hopeful past! What hand and brain went ever paired? We ride and I see her bosom heave. They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones. What does it all mean, poet? Well, And place them in rhyme so, side by side. And you, great sculptor-so, you gave You acquiesce, and shall I repine? But in music we know how fashions end!" Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate And yet she has not spoke so long! We, fixed so, ever should so abide? Changed not in kind but in degree, And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, forever ride? Robert Browning [1812–1889] YOUTH AND ART IT once might have been, once only: Your trade was with sticks and clay, You thumbed, thrust, patted, and polished, Then laughed, "They will see some day My business was song, song, song; I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered, "Kate Brown's on the boards ere long, And Grisi's existence embittered!" Youth and Art 861 I earned no more by a warble Than you by a sketch in plaster; We studied hard in our styles, Chipped cach at a crust like Hindoos, For air, looked out on the tiles, For fun, watched each other's windows. You lounged, like a boy of the South, And I soon managed to find Weak points in the flower-fence facing, Was forced to put up a blind, And be safe in my corset-lacing. No harm! It was not my fault If you never turned your eye's tail up, As I shook upon E in alt., Or ran the chromatic scale up: For spring bade the sparrows pair, And the boys and girls gave guesses, And stalls in our street looked rare Why did not you pinch a flower Of thanks in a look, or sing it? I did look, sharp as a lynx (And yet the memory rankles), When models arrived, some minx Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles. But I think I gave you as good! "That foreign fellow,-who can know How she pays, in a playful mood, For his tuning her that piano?" Could you say so, and never say, "Suppose we join hands and fortunes, And I fetch her from over the way, Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes"? No, no: you would not be rash, Nor I rasher and something over: You've to settle yet Gibson's hash, And Grisi yet lives in clover. But you meet the Prince at the Board, I've married a rich old lord, And you're dubbed knight and an R. A. Each life unfulfilled, you see; It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: And nobody calls you a dunce, And people suppose me clever: This could but have happened once, And we missed it, lost it forever. Robert Browning [1812-1889] TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA I WONDER do you feel to-day As I have felt since, hand in hand, Two in the Campagna For me, I touched a thought, I know, Help me to hold it! First it left The yellowing fennel, run to seed Took up the floating weft, Where one small orange cup amassed Five beetles,-blind and green they grope Among the honey-meal: and last, Everywhere on the grassy slope I traced it. Hold it fast! The champaign with its endless fleece And everlasting wash of air— Such life here, through such lengths of hours, Such primal naked forms of flowers, Such letting Nature have her way While Heaven looks from its towers! How say you? Let us, O my dove, To love or not to love? I would that you were all to me, You that are just so much, no more. Of the wound, since wound must be? 863 |